VOLUNTARY DISCLOSURE OF SEGMENT INFORMATION: FURTHER AUSTRALIAN EVIDENCE

This study provides further empirical evidence on incentives for Australian firms to voluntarily report segment information. Various economic reasons why firms may elect to present segment information have been hypothesised in previous research. Bradbury [1992] and McKinnon and Dalimunthe [1993] found firm size, minority interest and industry membership as significant identifiable characteristics motivating voluntary segmental disclosure. Variables found to be insignificant in Bradbury [1992] which were not examined by McKinnon and Dalimunthe [1993] are tested in this paper. Hypotheses relating to size, financial leverage, assets-in-place, earnings volatility, ownership diffusion, outside equity (minority) interest, overseas association as well as diverse and mining and oil classification hypotheses are empirically examined. Univariate tests and multivariate logit analysis suggest that for a extensive sample of diversified firms, voluntary segment disclosure is significantly related to size, leverage and involvement in mining or oil activities.     

Firm Resources and Corporate Venturing Investment

Corporate venturing (CV) in which established firms invest in new entrepreneurial businesses involves identifying opportunities and creating new combinations of resources to seize opportunities. Moving beyond literature that has focused predominantly on the consequences of CV, we adopt a resource‐based view to examine how knowledge‐based and organizational‐slack resources relate to the level of firm CV. The implications of the findings for future research are discussed. Copyright © 2011 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Modeling the fat tails in Asian stock markets

We test whether stock returns in the Asian markets are characterized by infinite variance or just large variance, which has an important implication for the applicability of many financial models in Asian market data. Employing the extreme value framework, we find that the Asian index return distributions are fat-tailed but have finite variance. However, the tails of the distributions behave similarly to those in the U.S. and the MSCI World index returns, suggesting that any financial model or risk management tool that incorporates the second moment would work equally well for the Asian market data as it does for developed market data. We apply the Value-at-Risk method using Asian and U.S. data and find no significant difference in performance.     

Are New Zealand Business Students More Unethical Than Non-Business Students?

Using undergraduate students from the Waikato University in New Zealand as a sample, this study compared the ethical positions of students of different field of study and demographic characteristics. It was found that the ethical standard of business students are not significantly different from that of non-business students. The findings also suggest that female students are more ethical than male students, and senior students are more ethical than junior students.Besides sex and year of study, other variables studied were parents' occupation, religiosity and household income of the students. All these variables were found to have no significant impact on the ethical position of the students. Furthermore, all the interaction effects between the variables studied and the students' major field of study were nonsignificant.     

Competition For Order Flow, Market Quality, And Price Discovery In The Nasdaq 100 Index Tracking Stock

We investigate competition for order flow, market quality, and price discovery in the Nasdaq 100 Index Tracking Stock (QQQ). The QQQ, an AMEX‐listed, exchange‐traded fund, is the most actively traded security in the U.S. equities market. On July 31, 2001, the NYSE began trading the QQQ, marking the first time it traded securities of companies it does not list. The greatest volume of trading takes place on electronic communication networks (ECNs), following by trading on the AMEX and the NYSE. Most of the block trades are executed on the AMEX, where the bid‐ask spreads are narrower. We find that ECNs contribute the most to the price‐discovery process. The spreads on all trading platforms have decreased and market quality and price discovery have improved since QQQ shares have traded on the NYSE.     

Trading and Pricing in Upstairs and Downstairs Stock Markets

We provide empirical evidence on the economic benefits of negotiatingtrades in the upstairs trading room of brokerage firms relativeto the downstairs market. Using Helsinki Stock Exchange data,we find that upstairs trades tend to have lower informationcontent and lower price impacts than downstairs trades. Thisis consistent with the hypotheses that the upstairs market isbetter at pricing uninformed liquidity trades and that upstairsbrokers can give better prices to their customers if they knowthe unexpressed demands of other customers. We find that theseeconomic benefits depend on price discovery occurring in thedownstairs market.     

Market Reaction to Multiple Contemporaneous Earnings Signals: Earnings Announcements and Future Earnings Guidance

We examine market reactions to contemporaneous announcements of current earnings and future earnings guidance for evidence on how investors trade off relevance and reliability. Current earnings are more reliable than future earnings guidance, but future earnings guidance may be more relevant for predicting future performance. We find that current earnings are more strongly associated with announcement-period returns than concurrently disclosed future earnings guidance, consistent with investors’ relative preference for reliability. We find similar return reactions to stand-alone earnings and to earnings released with guidance. In contrast, return reactions are lower for guidance announced simultaneously with current earnings than for stand-alone guidance.     

Unfolding China’s state-owned corporate empires and mitigating agency hazards: Effects of foreign investments and innovativeness

Integrating agency and institutional perspectives, we describe how China’s socio-political institutions create state-owned corporate empires with unique agency conflicts. We develop a framework demonstrating how economically unjustified firm expansion, i.e. empire building, mediates the relationship between state ownership and performance. We uncover the instrument in empire building and appropriate corporate governance and strategic management remedies. An empirical study on 29,638 Chinese firms evidences that (1) increased state ownership drives higher management expenses and lower firm profitability though empire building; (2) long-term debt is used to finance empire building; and (3) foreign capital investments and innovativeness can mitigate these agency conflicts.     

WHAT MAKES A GREAT JOURNAL GREAT IN ECONOMICS? THE SINGER NOT THE SONG

Abstract This paper analyses what makes a great journal great in economics. Alternative research assessment measures (RAM) are discussed, with an emphasis on the Thomson Reuters Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) Web of Science database. ISI RAM that are calculated annually or updated daily are defined, including the classic 2‐year impact factor (2YIF), 5‐year impact factor (5YIF), immediacy (zero‐year impact factor (0YIF)), eigenfactor score, article influence, citation performance per paper online, h‐index, Zinfluence, PI‐BETA (papers ignored ‐ by even the authors) and two new RAM measures, self‐citation threshold approval rating and impact factor inflation. The data are analysed for the most highly cited journals in economics, management, business and business–finance on the basis of 2YIF. In addition to evaluating research in the most highly cited journals in economics, management, business and business–finance, the paper evaluates alternative RAM, highlights similarities and differences in RAM criteria, finds that several RAM capture similar performance characteristics, and finds that immediacy and PI‐BETA are not highly correlated with other RAM. Harmonic mean rankings of the 12 RAM criteria are also presented. Emphasizing 2YIF to the exclusion of other useful RAM criteria can lead to a distorted evaluation of journal performance and influence.